Playing With Matches
by UntilNeverDawns
Summary: Wren Atkins is a shapeshifter. When Angel calls on her to help them at Wolfram and Hart, she shows up. Season 5 Spike/OC
1. Welcome To Wolfram and Hart

Playing With Matches

A/N: This is a Spike/OC fic taking place in Season five of _Angel_. Spike is corporeal… and now you know… here we go!!

A young woman, maybe twenty-one, twenty-two, walked into the LA offices of Wolfram and Hart looking like a bombshell and whistling a jazzy tune. She walked straight up to the blonde secretary.

"Yes?" the blonde girl asked, looking at the dark redhead with a bit of hostile confusion.

"I'm here to see Angel."

"Name?"

"Wren Atkins."

The blonde nodded and picked up a phone that was on her unicorn-covered desk.

"Angel, Wren Atkins is here for you. I'll send her in."

The blonde gestured to a door and Wren nodded her thanks.

When she entered, she saw a brooding brown haired man whom she assumed to be Angel, a vampire. Sitting in one of the black leather armchairs in the office was a rather handsome blonde guy wearing a black leather duster.

"Miss Atkins, I presume?" Angel asked. Wren nodded.

"That's me. You must be Angel."

He nodded. "And this annoying piece of crap is Spike." He gestured generally toward the blonde guy.

"Hello, cutie."

She gave him a sidelong, flirtatious glance and went down to business.

"You went through some of my _associates_ to try to reach me, I'm assuming this is of some rather great importance?"

"It is," Angel replied. "We're having some _difficulty_ negotiating with some of the demon clans, and the word is that you're the best translator there is."

She shrugged off the veiled compliment. "In other words, you need me to handle negotiations. Which clan?"

"Sebassis'," he looked at her, expecting some reaction. She didn't disappoint.

She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat and suddenly couldn't be seen through a cloud of sparkly gold shimmer. When it cleared, she wasn't standing there Archduke Sebassis was.

"Do you realize how disgusting this is?" Wren's voice said coming out of Sebassis' mouth. "It makes me want to puke, cut myself and die in the same breath."

"Now I see why it was such a good idea to hire you," Angel said. "Could you change back please? This is kind of really creepy."

There was another cloud of gold and Wren was standing there again. She looked at Angel with a slight amount of confusion as he picked up a phone and made some calls. She decided to sit down instead of standing there looking like an idiot, so she sat down on the black leather couch that was close to Spike's armchair. He looked at her, with her green-grey eyes and dark red hair that she looked at, squinted her eyes and changed to black.

"How'd you do that?" he asked quickly, shocked.

"Do what?"

"Change your hair color like that?"

I'm a shapeshifter. I do that." Just for the shock factor, she had the cloud of gold, and spike suddenly saw a carbon copy of himself sitting there.

"Whoa, what's two Spike's doing here?" A green-skinned demon asked as he entered the office.

Wren quickly did the 'gold cloud' effect and changed back to herself.

"Lorne, this is Wren Atkins, our newest team member."

The green guy nodded with a smile. Wren returned it.

"Wren, this may seem strange, but could you sing for us a bit? Lorne's an empathy demon…"

"Say no more, Angel." And she began to sing…

"_You with the sad eyes, _

_Don't be discouraged_

_Oh, I realize_

_It's hard to take courage_

_In a world full of people_

_You can lose sight of it all_

_And the darkness inside you_

_Can make you feel so small_

_I see your true colors _

_Shining through_

_I see your true colors_

_And that's why I love you_

_So don't be afraid to let them show_

_Your true colors_

_True colors_

_Are beautiful like a rainbow"_

Lorne looked at her and wiped a tear from his eye.

"Dear, you don't look a year over twenty. How can you have seen so much? And have such great taste. Cyndi Lauper-a classic"

"Lorne, you'd be running if I looked my age. I _was_ born in 1851, you know."

There was a shocked silence.

"What????"

_**Ok, read and review!!! Much love.**_


	2. The New Roommate

Playing With Matches Part 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't own this. If I did I'd be continuing the series and giving Spike some romance, but I don't so I can't.

Everyone looked at Wren in shock.

"What? Was it something I said?" She looked confused.

"Eighteen Fifty-One," Spike choked out. "You're a hundred and fifty bloody years old!"

Wren nodded. "And your point is…"

"What Spike is trying to say, little bird is that for your age, you look _fabulous_." Lorne cut in, trying to cover Spike's incredibly _passé_ comment.

Spike just nodded intently with what Lorne was saying.

Wren rolled her eyes. The whole 'age thing' was inconsequential. Her experience was an asset.

"Wren," Angel asked. "How'd you like to meet the rest of the team?"

"I'd like that quite a bit, Angel." She said with a dazzling smile.

Angel picked up the phone.

"Harmony, I need Wes, Gunn and Fred in here now, you too."

"Right away, bossy," the overly cheerful voice on the other end replied.

Before much longer, three more people entered the office.

"Wren, this is Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Winifred Burkle and Charles Gunn. They are the rest of the team. Guys, meet Wren Atkins. She's an incredibly talented shapeshifter who will be an incredible asset to our team."

The girl called Winifred perked up, "It's going to be so nice to have another girl around here! You can call me Fred."

Wren smiled. "Thanks, I'm just Wren. I've had a few other names in the past, but that's not so important."

"So, Miss Atkins," Wesley asked.

"Wren," she corrected with a smile.

"Wren, what fields of shapeshifting are you a specialty of? I know where are many, but I've never made a thorough study of it."

"I'm a general. Just the basic, I see it I can shift it. I've had it for a good long while."

"Can we get a demo?" Gunn asked, almost as if he didn't believe what Angel had said.

"Sure," she replied. She shifted into a carbon copy of Gunn in a cloud of gold dust.

"Wow. Ok, I'm impressed."

"That must be convenient," Fred said with a grin. "Angel, where is she staying? The demons have filled all of our temporary lodging."

Angel looked around in a 'oops I needed to have arranged for that' kind of way.

"She can stay with me," Spike offered. "It's not like I haven't got the space."

"Wren, is that all right with you? It'll only be temporary until the negotiations are complete and we can get you better housing."

"That's fine with me as long as I won't be an imposition." She said, looking over at Spike.

"You won't be imposing at all, pet, I promise you." Spike said looking back at her and sharing a flirty glance.

"Anyway," Angel said, wary of the flirtation between Wren and Spike. "Wes, will you show Wren to her office? It's in your department."

Wes nodded and gestured for Wren to follow him. He led her into the Translation Department, went down the hall a bit and opened a door.

"Your office, Miss Adkins," Wesley said.

Wren looked around and sighed appreciatively. It was perfect.

"Thank you, Wesley. This is wonderful."

He nodded and left, shutting the door behind him. Wren sat down in her office chair and got her black laptop out of her leather laptop case/briefcase. She had some last-minute research that needed done before she dealt with the clans. Sebassis was a difficult demon to work with, his clan even more so. All of them together were not going to be easy.

"Cutie, are you in here?" Spike's voice came from outside her door.

"Yeah, c'mon in." Spike entered her office and sat down on the edge of her desk. He fiddled with the cup of pens that was sitting by him, just looking at Wren clicking away on her laptop.

"Whatcha doin', pet?" he asked as she looked up for a moment from her computer screen.

"Research," she replied, going back to what she was doing.

"Well, I just thought I'd let you know that I'm leaving for the day and if you're staying with me, it may be wise that you do the same," he said, flipping the top of her laptop shut.

She sighed in exasperation and put it back in her bag, standing up so that she could leave with Spike to go to wherever 'home' was going to be this time.

**A/N: Hope you all liked this chapter. Please review!! If I don't get reviews then I'm not likely to write again soon, and there are some awesome plot bunnies around my head right now for Spike and Wren.**


	3. A Lost Bet

Playing With Matches

Part Three.

Wren followed Spike to where 'home' was. He unlocked the door and swept his arm around in a big gesture.

"Welcome home, pet."

Wren walked in the door and dropped her duffel bag and garment bags. It wasn't much, but it felt homey, as homey as it could get for a shape-shifter with a vampire roommate.

"You can have the bed. I'll sleep on the couch," Spike offered. Wren shook her head.

"I'm not kicking you out of your bed, Spike. I'll take the couch, it's not an issue." Spike shrugged and dumped her stuff on the couch. Wren rolled her eyes and hung up the garment bag on the back of one of the doors, leaving her duffel where it lay.

"Hungry?" Spike called from the kitchen.

"Not really. Thanks for the offer though," she said, switching her hair color to a honey blonde and giving herself violet eyes.

Spike reentered the room with a bottle of beer and a plate of hot wings. Wren had seated herself on the couch and was typing something on her laptop.

"That looks important," Spike observed, not bothering to look over her shoulder at what she was typing. Wren laughed and showed him the screen. It was a video game.

Spike started laughing too. "You play video games?"

Wren looked at him as if he was joking. "Well, duh. I beat anyone and everyone at Crash Bandicoot."

Spike snorted. "Not likely, pet. I'm the best the ever was."

"You care to make a bet?" Wren said a mischievous glint in her now-violet eyes.

"You're on, pet. Loser has to… steal one of Angel's cars."

Wren scoffed. "That's hardly a punishment. That's too much fun."

Spike tossed her a controller. "Fine, girlie. We'll see what happens when you lose."

"Fat chance, Vamp boy." She said; her eyes already glued to the screen.

**TEN HOURS AND 23 ROUNDS LATER**

Wren was looking at the screen in disbelief.

"You…beat…me…" she said, not trusting her eyes or her ears.

"Don't take it too hard, pet." Spike said, handing her a beer. "You might want to sleep, cause don't you have those demons to negotiate with in a couple of hours?"

"Shit. I do, don't I?" she said, taking a swig of the beer. "Oh, well. Goodnight Spike." She said, shifting into a border collie and curling up on the couch. Spike scratched a bit behind the dog's ears and headed to the bed, before realizing how unfair it was to make the dog sleep on the couch.

"C'mere doggie," he said, patting the duvet. The dog gave him a very Wren-like look and curled up on the bed, falling asleep quickly.

Wren's dog ears picked up the sound of her phone alarm right when it went off. She shifted back to turn it off, and wanted to go back to sleep. She grabbed an outfit and hurried to shower before Spike woke up. She made her hair dark brown curls that looked like those of a singer she greatly enjoyed, with gold eyes. She was wearing a professional-looking skirt and jacket with a headband keeping her curls back.

"Morning, pet," Spike said when she came out, fully dressed.

"Morning Spike." She replied.

"So about that bet you lost," he said with a smirk.

Wren groaned. She hated losing bets.

"What do I have to do, Spike?" she said finally, almost scared for his response.

"Oh, nothin' big, pet. You just have to go on a date with me."

Wren laughed. "All you had to do was ask, Spike. After work tonight?"

He nodded, dumbfounded at her reaction.

Wren grinned. "Shouldn't we be getting to the office?"

He nodded, and they arrived at the office just in the nick of time.

"Wren, Thank God you're here!" Lorne said as soon as the elevator doors opened. "Sebassis is here and he isn't happy."

"Lovely," she said humorlessly, shifting into one of the demons and saying some not-very-nice things in the language. _Mind on other things, Wren. Like the date tonight. _

She couldn't wait.

**A/N: Here's the new chapter guys! Hope you like it. The date will be in the next chapter. :)**


	4. Date Night

Playing With Matches Part Four

**Many thanks to the reviews who finally got be back to writing this! So my Pandora station is on Billy Idol and I can finally write the long-awaited Spike/Wren date night. Who's excited? This girl!**

Wren went back to her office and slammed her fists onto the desk. The negotiations went fine, but she was frustrated with the demons nonetheless.

"What's up, little bird?" Lorne asked, coming into the office and feeling the frustration in the air.

"I'm fine Lorne. Thanks, though."

"You ready to go, pet?" Spike said, coming through the door.

Wren nodded and got her things together before heading back to Spike's place. She honestly couldn't recall the last time she had gone on an honest-to-goodness date. She went through her suitcase and garment bag trying to find something to wear and debating how she was going to do her hair. She shifted her eyes to a sapphire blue and kept her black curls, finding a pair of jeans and a form-fitting black tee shirt. She tied her hair back, making the shade more of a dark red.

She came out of the bathroom and saw Spike holding a game controller.

"I ordered take-out," Spike said. "I hope that's alright."

Wren nodded.

"You were expecting something different, weren't you, love?" he asked.

"No, it's great Spike," she hid the small undertones of disappointment well, but Spike knew better.

"Change your clothes," he said. "We're going out."

"Spike, that's not—"

"Don't argue with me, pet," he said.

Wren turned around and went back to her clothes. She dug out a blue dress that hit about 4 inches above her knees and a pair of black heels. She pulled her hair tie out of her curls and made them black again.

Spike stared when she came out of the room.

"Should I go change again?"

Spike shook his head. "You look bloody fantastic!"

Wren blushed and Spike offered his arm and escorted her to the car that he had "borrowed" from Angel. He pulled up next to one of the clubs that LA was famous for, that catered to the demon and mortal alike.

They walked in and heard Michael Buble's "Feeling Good" blasting through the speakers and Spike pulled her out onto the dance floor. They danced together, moving in sync with each other and the rhythm.

It seemed like hours later when they finally stopped dancing and left the club. They went back to the apartment and cracked open a few beers.

"That was so much fun!" Wren said with a laugh as she took a swig from one of the beers that were sitting on the table.

"I'm glad you had fun, pet," Spike said.

"I don't think I've had this much fun with someone for at least half a century," she confessed.

"You're joking, right?" he said.

Wren shook her head. "I'm serious."

Spike stood up and walked over to her side of the table, pulling her to her feet.

"Well we'd better make this one really memorable then," he said, taking her face in his hands and kissing her gently. Their kiss deepened and Wren found herself gasping for air when they parted.

"Wow," she said breathlessly before pressing her lips back to Spike's.

Wren woke up the next morning to the sound of her phone alarm. The arm around her _clothed_ waist groaned and pulled her tighter.

"Spike, I have to go to work."

"Bloody hell you do. Call Peaches and tell him you're sick."

She turned around and gave him a kiss. "You know I can't do that, especially not on my third day of work."

Wren untangled herself and went to shower and get ready for work. She came out in a black pencil skirt and sapphire blouse with black heels, her hair was a dark honey color and she made her eyes green.

"I liked your hair black," Spike groaned.

"Well this is for work and not for you, sorry." Wren said in a falsely apologetic tone.

The vampire got up and pulled the shifter to him, kissing her fiercely.

"We need to go, Spike," she said as he trailed kisses down her neck.

"No we don't," he said with an evil grin, picking her up.

**I'm usually very anti-cliffhanger, but maybe you all will bug me enough to get the next chapter out before Christmas? Anyway, REVIEW!**

**Reviewers get cookies.**

**UntilNeverDawns.**


End file.
